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EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING IS AT THE HEART OF early childhood education. Professionals in our field are deeply committed to providing children with opportunities to learn by doing, observing, and experimenting. We owe this philosophy to a number of individuals whose historical writings and work with children influenced contemporary approaches to early childhood education. This column highlights one such individual-Lucy Sprague Mitchell, founder of New York's Bank Street College of Education. Over the course of her career, Mitchell made significant contributions to teacher education.
Who was Lucy Sprague Mitchell?
Lucy Sprague Mitchell's life spanned two centuries, 1878-1967. These years brought tremendous advances and burgeoning interest in the field of education. From 1906 to 1912 Mitchell served as the first Dean of Women at the University of California-Berkeley, where her work with university students prepared her to become a lifelong advocate for children. Through her establishment of relevant courses of study and related field trips for university students, she began to see how important learning through discovery is to people of all ages. After she and economist Wesley Clair Mitchell were married, the couple settled in New York City, where Wesley accepted a position at Columbia University in 1913. Not one to sit idly, Lucy established the Bureau of Educational Experiments (BEE) in 1916, later to become the Bank Street College of Education, and authored bestselling books for children and teachers; she also cofounded what would become the Bank Street School for Children (in 1919) and the Cooperative School for Student Teachers (in 1930).
Bank Street College of Education
Founded by Lucy Sprague Mitchell, Wesley Mitchell, and Harriet Johnson, the BEE had a staff of teachers and researchers who studied young children "to find out what kind of environment is best suited to [children's] learning and growth, to create that environment, and to train adults to maintain it" (Bank Street College of Education 2014b). The Bureau opened a nursery school three years later, and in 1930 the BEE moved to 69 Bank Street in Greenwich Village and established the Cooperative School for Student Teachers. This school focused on preparing teachers to attend to "the development of the whole child" (Bank Street College of Education 2014b).
Mitchell's work with student teachers and her publications earned the Cooperative School for...